Internal or External Hard Drive?

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 with a 40GB hard drive. I'm a writer, so the disk space has been adequate, but recently I purchased a digital camera and now I'm in need of more space. What should I buy to create more space: a new internal drive or an external drive? Cost is an issue. I could afford up to about $150 or $200 dollars at most. I need to archive my material as wella separate issue at least as important, if not more so.

Patty Matteson

The answer depends on whether you want to be able to have your photos available on the laptop to show others at all times. If so, then you may want to upgrade the internal hard drive to a larger one. But in general, you might consider a compact, external hard drive, like Western Digital's WD Passport Portable drive. The largest ones offer capacities up to 160GB. They're fairly rugged and small enough to toss into a briefcase, backpack, or even a purse.

In any case, you should back up your photos fairly often. If your laptop has a CD-R or DVD-R, back up your photos at least once a month, if not more often. Your photos are irreplaceable, and a hard drive can crashand potentially destroy all the data stored on it.